Rekor Redefines Privacy, Security and Sharing for License Plate Data for Commercial and Government Users

Company adds new features, greatly expands existing capabilities on its AI-based platform now called Rekor Scout™

Rekor Systems, Inc., (NASDAQ: REKR) (“Rekor”) (the “Company”) a Maryland-based company providing real-time roadway intelligence through AI-driven decisions, today announced that it released a major update to its automatic license plate and vehicle recognition software, Rekor Scout, formerly known as Rekor Watchman. Known for its ability to turn nearly any IP, traffic, or security camera into an AI-powered vehicle recognition system, the new version of Scout adds extensive new privacy, security and sharing controls for its commercial and government users.

“With growing concerns over data privacy worldwide, it’s no surprise that we need to continually innovate our solutions to meet customer needs far into the future,” said Chris Kadoch, CTO, Rekor. “This version of our Scout software makes generational leaps in enabling commercial and government customers to take highly granular control over security, privacy and sharing settings to comply with their own policies and outside mandates. This sets a new bar in privacy and security in the use of license plate recognition.”

Policy-Driven Retention

In response to recent and increasing concerns about license plate privacy, Scout now allows customers to define how long the vehicle information and license plate image will be retained based on their own privacy, data retention and data management policies dependent on the severity and class of infraction. Agencies and enterprises can set policy and severity-based auto-retention policies for every individual type of data capture rather than the traditional “blanket” time-based model. For instance, the retention policy for “felony offenders” can be set to a longer period than that for “misdemeanors,” and plate reads that are not associated with an offense can be different still -- perhaps even not retained at all.

Enhanced Sharing and Privacy Controls

Following the general theme of providing the individual enterprise or agency more control of their data, Scout delivers three key means to share and control who has access to data:

1. Rekor Public Safety Network (RPSN): For government agencies and law enforcement that want to securely share their Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) data with other jurisdictions, the RPSN is an extensive network of Rekor clients that opt-in to contribute to and/or access a global database of information. It serves as an open data sharing infrastructure for the global public sector and speeds collaboration for cross-jurisdictional investigations such as Amber Alerts.
2. Peer-to-Peer Sharing: Transferring data to a “global database” inherently introduces some loss of direct control over data retention and usage. Consequently, Rekor Scout provides a peer-to-peer (federated) secure search that allows government agencies and enterprises to define sharing relationships so that data can be shared without the need to transfer it to an external data lake. This type of federated search model allows agencies to define who may search their data, and the searchability of data can be further restricted to specific cameras using defined and secure pathways.
3. Rekor’s Open API: Unlike competitive products in the market, Rekor takes a different approach to data sharing. At Rekor, we believe the customer truly owns their data—which is why we created an open API, wherein an agency can send data to and receive data from any 3rd party system that they choose (provided the party is accepting). As an example, an agency can now forward reads to virtually any willing 3rd party system or seamlessly accept reads using an API specifically for law enforcement. They can also share ALPR data to a separate application such as one that publishes the real-time availability of parking spots to assist local government in the coordination of a regional approach to parking management.

Enhanced Situational Awareness

Rekor Scout software brings real-time video access to the thousands of current roadside ALPR systems to increase situational awareness throughout a region. The Rekor Edge series of vehicle recognition hardware allows both “near real-time” streaming from the edge through its Scout interface for situational awareness, as well as an optional 30-day archival video record of roadway activity to support investigations.  

The new version of Scout is even easier to use and implement with simplified user account creation and management, effectively reducing administrative workload.

Rekor Scout is available immediately to all current Rekor public sector and commercial customers at a cost between $49 and $79 per month depending on local or cloud implementation. New customers can try the software for free for 14 days. Scout is also available with baseline features to homeowners and smaller business for just $5 a month. Learn more about Rekor Scout at https://www.openalpr.com/software/scout.